This research attempted to use agile manufacturing cells to achieve agile manufacturing. Based on the analysis of cell modeling requirements in a constantly changing manufacturing environment, a new architecture of agile manufacturing cell model was introduced to better address its extensibility, reusability, and robustness. High sophisticated scheduling heuristics have high computation complexity, and very sensitive to disturbances, therefore not suitable for highly dynamic manufacturing environment. In this research, a new distributed agile scheduling method attempting to meet the requirements was proposed. The scheduling algorithm is based on a distributed computing platform to take advantage of its responsiveness, parallel processing, and robustness.; It was concluded that the proposed scheduling algorithm performed better than other rules at various levels of cell load. The higher the cell load, the more the proposed rule outperformed other priority rules. Hence, agile manufacturing cells can be more robust and flexible with the proposed agile manufacturing cell model and its scheduling algorithm.
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